The NASCAR Xfinity Series (NXS) headed to Kentucky Speedway for the 17th race on the 2018 schedule. For the second week in a row the NXS raced on Friday night under the lights. The Menards / NRG Racing driver Brandon Jones qualified his Toyota Camry in the 11th position for the 200-lap event.

At the start of the race, Jones quickly realized he had a fast Camry and was listed ninth on lap 20 and worked his way into seventh by the end of Stage 1 on lap 45. Under the caution period, crew chief Chris Gabehart summoned his driver to pit road for tires, fuel and a minor adjustment to help him compete for the lead.

Jones took the Stage 2 restart seventh and cracked the top five by lap 53. On lap 59, Jones radioed to his team that his Toyota Camry was about perfect. Running lap times as fast as the leader, Jones crossed the finish line to end Stage 2 fifth. Once again, his crew summoned him to pit road for four fresh Goodyear tires and fuel. He restarted seventh for the final stage.

The third caution flag flew on lap 99 and the Menards crew opted to keep their driver on the racing surface. On the restart, Jones was lined up on the outside in sixth when slight contact by John Nemechek sent him spinning. Jones was able to avoid other cars but went hard into the inside wall. The damage was too significant for the Menards Toyota Camry to return to racing. Jones crossed the finish line a disappointing 36th.

What ended your race?
“Gosh, one of our really good mile-and-a-half cars here. This has got to be a kill or be killed situation on these restarts. You really have to be so tight to the guy that’s in your inside when you have an outside restart like that. You can’t really, you know – it’s very tough to pass whenever you get single file like we were, so I was taking advantage as much as I could. Unfortunately, that’s the risk you do take whenever you do that, but we had to do it to see what happens and that was the outcome, so unfortunately we have a tore up race car, but at the end of the day we really had a lot of momentum going here, so we’ll take it to New Hampshire and we’ll be good there I think.”